November 24.—I went to town without a pocket-handkerchief.
This is the second time I have done this during the last week.
I must be losing my memory. Had it not been for this Daisy Mutlar
business, I would have written to Mr. Burwin-Fosselton and told him
I should be out this evening, but I fancy he is the sort of young man
who would come all the same.

Dear old Cummings came in the evening; but Gowing sent round a little
note saying he hoped I would excuse his not turning up, which rather
amused me. He added that his neck was still painful. Of
course, Burwin-Fosselton came, but Lupin never turned up, and imagine
my utter disgust when that man Padge actually came again, and not even
accompanied by Gowing. I was exasperated, and said: “Mr.
Padge, this is a surprise.” Dear Carrie, fearing
unpleasantness, said: “Oh! I suppose Mr. Padge has only come to
see the other Irving make-up.” Mr. Padge said: “That’s
right,” and took the best chair again, from which he never moved
the whole evening.

My only consolation is, he takes no supper, so he is not an expensive
guest, but I shall speak to Gowing about the matter. The Irving
imitations and conversations occupied the whole evening, till I was
sick of it. Once we had a rather heated discussion, which was
commenced by Cummings saying that it appeared to him that Mr. Burwin-Fosselton
was not only like Mr. Irving, but was in his judgment every way
as good or even better. I ventured to remark that
after all it was but an imitation of an original.

Cummings said surely some imitations were better than the originals.
I made what I considered a very clever remark: “Without an original
there can be no imitation.” Mr. Burwin-Fosselton said quite
impertinently: “Don’t discuss me in my presence, if you
please; and, Mr. Pooter, I should advise you to talk about what you
understand;” to which that cad Padge replied: “That’s
right.” Dear Carrie saved the whole thing by suddenly saying:
“I’ll be Ellen Terry.” Dear Carrie’s imitation
wasn’t a bit liked, but she was so spontaneous and so funny that
the disagreeable discussion passed off. When they left, I very
pointedly said to Mr. Burwin-Fosselton and Mr. Padge that we should
be engaged to-morrow evening.

The Diary of a Nobody is the fictitious diary of Charles Pooter, written by George
Grossmith and originally serialised in Punch magazine in 1888 and 1889.The text of this version is taken from
the Gutenberg etext, and the weblog
format was engineered by Kevan Davis (initially a straight
weblog in 2004, then rewritten as an auto RSS generator in April 2007).